


maybe you'll be the first to die

by DragonHawthorn



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: The Musical - Wildhorn/Murphy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Canon - Musical, Character Study, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memory Loss, One Shot, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, by which i mean it's the musical timeline, i explain the main alteration to the musical plot in the beginning note, mentions of yknow. her being arrested and the resulting trauma, so if you plan on watching it and dont want spoilers, then dont open this (yet)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonHawthorn/pseuds/DragonHawthorn
Summary: Misa Amane is released into house arrest two weeks after Kira’s murders tapered off – two weeks after Light’s death – and she doesn’t know why those two events are linked in her mind even before she’s told that the two were one and the same. Because they were the most important people in her life, probably, and because they both came into her life at around the same time, and both of them had left it at the same time too.
Relationships: (but only in the sense that she is grieving him), Amane Misa/Rem, Amane Misa/Yagami Light, Implied/Mentioned - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	maybe you'll be the first to die

**Author's Note:**

> wow, this musical slaps, huh?  
> in other news, this is based on the musical timeline. the main thing to be aware of is that L's death goes a little differently, and Ryuk kills Light immediately afterwards. It's also not really clear whether Kira's true identity ever comes out. misa DOES finish the story scattering what is implied to be rem's ashes instead of. the bullshit she gets dealt in most adaptations. so that's <33  
> the fic title is from a [the Dan Warren song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktdEk-oUMss) from his album Departures. check his stuff out, it's absolutely amazing but barely anyone knows it which is a travesty.  
> oh, and let me know if there are typos - i'm in the middle of exams, so this hasn't been proofread

Misa Amane is released into house arrest two weeks after Kira’s murders tapered off – two weeks after Light’s death – and she doesn’t know why those two events are linked in her mind even before she’s told that the two were one and the same. Because they were the most important people in her life, probably, and because they both came _into_ her life at around the same time, and both of them had left it at the same time too.

When an officer opens the door to her cell, she starts to cry, because they’re finally here, someone realised she was gone and called the police on whoever had kidnapped her.

She doesn’t believe, at first, that it was the police themselves that had been – holding her, sedating her, restraining her, blindfolding and torturing and interrogating and _she doesn’t know anything she hasn’t done anything she just wants to see Light, why isn’t he here, where is her boyfriend, why hasn’t he saved her_ – it’s Light’s father who eventually convinces her of the cruel truth, because of course she can trust her future father-in-law, Light loves and admires him so clearly that she can’t help but do the same.

It’s also Light’s father who tells her exactly why he’s never going to be her father-in-law.

Two weeks.

She’s missed the funeral.

*

The car that takes her back to her apartment has tinted windows. She doesn’t have the presence of mind to check her appearance by their reflection before she gets in, and that’s probably for the best, because when she finally gets to her own bathroom, she barely recognises herself. At least she’s alone now, at least no one sees her burst into tears at the thought that people _saw_ her like this, looking like… like someone who’s been held in captivity for two weeks and five days. At least they didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her react, yet again, to what they’ve done to her, the satisfaction of seeing her ugly, blotchy, scrunched-up, tear-stained face, like a newborn baby. At least her makeup was ruined by the end of that first awful night, and now there’s not a trace of it left to be smudge as she scrubs at her face with her sleeves.

She inspects the damage more closely, this time not out of vanity but out of pragma. She has to assess the damage, she has to know exactly how to fix it, what specialty products to order before her next shoot. No, she’s on house arrest, she won’t be working anytime soon. Still.

Her hair is greasy and ragged, with split ends that run up half its length in some places. Shampoo it three times until it finally feels clean, massage olive oil in, order liquid keratin conditioner, don’t bleach it again until it’s grown out, maybe cut it short to remove the most damaged parts – that would mean she didn’t have to worry about styling it with heat tools, too.

One of her ear piercings is infected, the other closed over entirely – her earrings had fallen out or been removed at some point, although she has no memory of either. Nothing to do there but keep them clean and wait until they’re both healed so she can have them repierced.

Her nails are cracked in some places, but at least her hands had been restrained, she hadn’t been able to use them for much of anything and that kept her from – scratching at her blindfold until either her face or hands bled, struggling with ropes until the quick of every finger felt raw and bare, pounding at the floor and the wall and the door until every nail was broken or torn off and maybe a couple of fingers were broken too.

So perhaps there was some silver lining to being so totally restrained. Or – _No_ , she thinks as spitefully and as righteously as she can manage, _they wouldn’t be damaged at all if this hadn’t happened_.

Her nails had been saved, but her wrists were not. They're raw and bleeding from sagging against her restraints for so long, pulling at them as she tried to get free, barely even noticing the pain. She takes off the bandages that someone had applied when she was allowed to leave her cell, rubs antiseptic and ointment on the open wounds, and re-wraps them. She'll be wearing long sleeves for a while yet.

One of the officers at the station had given Misa been given a cloth at the station to clean the grime and blood off herself, but not a mirror, so she’d only really been able to wipe down her arms and neck, too wary of those long hours of surveillance to consider undressing, even in the privacy of the bathroom stall. Even those areas she had been able to reach don’t feel like they’ll ever be clean again. Acne has broken out on her face and the back of her neck – there is one particularly sore pimple-y spot just inside her nostril, and it hurts when she accidentally touches her nose, which makes her want to touch it more, to soothe, which makes it hurt even more. She takes stock of her skin products – most of it is fine, but she’ll have to order something to clear up the breakout fast. Even if she won’t be going out in public anytime soon, she still has to make herself presentable. She has to be able to see herself in the mirror, not some… long-lost ugly twin.

Besides, pimples hurt.

She’s lost weight, even over this short period of time. That’s going to be a problem, she thinks – it will be gained back twofold if she goes back to eating normally. Misa has been dieting since before she started modelling. Paleo, usually, or Mediterranean; a cleanse three times a year. And now, if she goes back to that, her body will gain as much weight as it can anyway just because it thinks she’s still starving. It’s not _fair_. She can ease back into her regular diet over a couple of weeks, but honestly who knows if that’s the right thing to do. Maybe more research is the way to proceed.

Misa likes baths, but in her current state, she’d end up in a pool of greasy mud. So she pulls the shower curtain closed, and it’s almost three hours before she emerges from the bathroom feeling new and fresh and a tiny bit better.

*

It’s almost eerie to find her bedroom almost exactly as it was two weeks ago. It would almost make her forget how long it’s been, except for the few traces of time’s passage that confront her when she enters. A half-eaten sandwich on her bedside table, now covered in disgusting mold; her spare phone, flat from being left off the charger so long; one of her favourite markers uncapped on the desk, now dry and unusable; an apple on the windowsill, peculiarly dry and shrunken almost beyond recognition.

There are also some more sinister – or, at least, unexpected – differences from how she remembers leaving her room. One of her curtains is torn, a jagged vertical gash as though it were caught on a nail and pulled. And on her desk, in front of the plate of what used to be food, is a squat black vase, as tall as her laptop, with an inscription written in off-white in some language she doesn’t recognise.

And really, the thing that bothers Misa about this should be the implicit threat from the stalker who did this, the troubling security risk she hadn’t known about. That _should_ be what bothers her. But she can barely even think of that, because the second she sees it, she can’t stop thinking of – 

*

Waking up at loud noises downstairs. Leaving her bedroom only to find her mother outside the door, ushering her back in, telling her to stay in the closet until it was safe. Her father, holding a bedside lamp, tiptoeing downstairs. The back of the robber’s head, reflected in a mirror. The slivers of moonlight that shone through the cracks in the closet door, the awful silence after a few minutes of scuffling downstairs, her mother’s scream. Staying hidden for several minutes after the silence falls, just in case, and then opening the door as quietly as she can. Padding towards the landline outside her parents’ room and dialling 110. Creeping back to the bedroom after reporting the break-in and curling up again in the pile of fallen clothes at the bottom of the closet. Staying there, because her parents weren’t back yet, it must not be safe. Struggling to stay awake, stay alert, probably dozing off without noticing, because certainly there is no difference between reality and nightmare when she’s alone in the dark in both. Hours later, screaming when the door is opened by a police officer. Being brought out to an ambulance with a shock blanket covering her pyjamas, through the living room, past the two human-sized lumps already covered in sheets. Something in her recognising, innately, exactly which shrouded body is her mother and which is her father, from the way they lie, the size of them, her mother’s bloodied fingers peeking out under one edge.

Walking home from one of her first modelling jobs, scrolling through social media on her phone, revelling in her blossoming popularity. Accidentally making a wrong turn on the unfamiliar route, turning to backtrack along the dead-end street, finding her path blocked. A silhouette in the setting sun, blinding her to her attacker’s face. That same popularity twisting like a knife in her gut, a cancerous overgrown root, as she realises exactly what’s happening. The fear, the emptiness, _this is how it was meant to be, it was only a matter of time, I escaped then but I won’t cheat fate twice_.

Cheating fate, twice.

Watching a news broadcast with bated breath as it proclaimed the death of a homicide suspect. His mother, on screen, crying that he was innocent, that he would have been released soon had tragedy not struck. The knowledge that he was guilty, the burnt-in memory of his face on the security tapes from that awful, awful night. The knowledge that she was right about one thing – he would certainly have been released soon. The bone-deep certainty that this was no tragedy: it was justice, sweet and plain and merciful. The gratitude and joy and devotion and faith that filled her heart, two days later, when it was confirmed that there was indeed an executioner behind it. A hero.

Seeing Light Yagami for the first time. Her soulmate, certainly, for how else would she know that she loved him the second she saw him? How else would she know his name before he even spoke? Love at first sight, love in its purest form. Love that would last past death.

Love that would remain even as Misa waited and waited and _waited_ to be saved, each day only growing more sure he would come, he would realise she was gone, he was surely working already to find and free her. Love that shrieked and tore at every question, every accusation. If Light were Kira – he would have told her, of course he would. He would trust her to support him, he knew how he felt about her saviour, and about him. After all, he felt the same way. Love that burned in her and pulled her apart from the inside out when his father pulled her aside to inform her, quietly, of what had happened.

*

So Misa doesn’t report the break-in, or throw out the urn, because it’s – important. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t even want to look at it; it fills her with an unspeakable grief every time she sees it, as every death and every brush with death comes running back. But she doesn’t hide it, either. It sits on her desk, untouched, and it will sit there until – until what, she doesn’t know. Until she remembers why it’s important, or decides what to do with it, or… something. 

*

She’s allowed access to television, newspapers, even the internet. It makes sense; Misa Amane is still under suspicion of being the Second Kira, and the easiest way to catch her out would be to release her from solitary confinement, only for the killings to restart.

They don’t restart, of course. Misa is not the Second Kira.

She asks one of the officers guarding her home – guarding the world from her – to collect copies of every newspaper she’s missed. She watches today’s news broadcast while she waits, and ventures into her kitchen to check the damage. At least she keeps it fairly clean - the few dirty dishes that there are are already rinsed, so at least they’re not covered in dried and rotting food. The pantry, too, is fine; the food there is long-lasting, in tins and boxes and jars. The fridge is another story. She doesn’t even bother opening most of the cartons and packages before she throws them out, not wanting to have to cope with the smell that is already seeping out of the less airtight ones. She opens the fruit drawer, but stops still after disposing of a bag of squishy grapes. She had thought the apples, at least, would still be edible, but there aren’t any. She had been sure she had some, a whole bag, because they’re her go-to snack in the afternoon. Still, it’s not like her memory or her mind are very reliable sources at the moment. She pulls a frozen meal out of the freezer and defrosts it in the microwave while she writes up a list of groceries she needs to either order for delivery or have one of the officers bring.

Matsuda returns that evening with a stack of newspapers from different presses, dating back to the day after her arrest. He stammers out an explanation about having to search high and low for the older ones, and she has the presence of mind to thank him before closing the door in his face, but she’s not paying attention. The front page of the top paper is Sakura News, speculating not on Kira, or even Light, but on MisaMisa. She hadn’t really considered that her absence would be noticed by anyone except Light and her manager and employers. It makes sense, though, now that she considers it; she’s never been the kind of celebrity to take unexplained absences from social media, and she’s often spotted around town and begged for autographs or pictures. It would be impossible for someone in the public not to catch on. Still, it doesn’t make up for Sakura’s sensational speculation – that she’s grievously injured, secretly pregnant, has been deported, busted for drugs, had some kind of sudden and terrible illness. It’s impressive, really, how many scandals they can fit in a single column. In Misa’s opinion, she deserves more than a single column, but it’s a moot point; this is from one of the earlier editions, only a week after her disappearance. As she sifts through the stack to find anything relating to what happened two weeks ago, other papers begin to devote space to her whereabouts as well. Sakura did a feature on her three days ago; they seem to have latched onto the “secretly pregnant” theory, which is just _rude_ and _stupid_ . If she _was_ pregnant – which she wouldn’t be! – it would have been easy to notice, on account of her modelling work and also because Light would have married her. Or at least proposed, and then she would have announced the engagement, and _that_ would be the thing everyone was talking about.

If he hadn’t died. If she hadn’t been in police custody. If – 

The Kira-related articles within the last week all say more or less the same thing, and after reading one and a half Misa can’t bring herself to do anything more than skim them. Confirmations and assurances that Kira’s executions have stopped. A lot of the papers are now calling them “murders”, which is an insult to Kira’s memory – to Light’s memory, if the papers are to be believed. It seems that the past two weeks have only served to strengthen the notion that the two were one and the same. It makes her feel sick – that horrible detective have been so stubborn in his interrogations, and she can barely remember the first few days, before his distorted voice vanished, replaced with other voices, more human ones that were all the more frightening for it. What she can remember of L, however is this: _How does Kira kill his victims? You have considerable gratitude towards Kira. Do you remember when you met Light Yagami? When did you become the Second Kira? Why did you become the Second Kira? When you say a world without darkness, do you mean a world with only Light? Did you meet Yagami Light at the crossroads at Shibuya? You killed the detective who was following him, didn’t you? You’re cooperating with Light. You’re cooperating with Kira. Kira is Light is Kira is Light is Kira is Light is Kira is_

She remembers this: being afraid to agree with him, even though the idea of Light being Kira filled her with joy. Even now, although it feels so _right_ to think of it, she can’t bring herself to say it out loud, to agree with them, to let anyone know. _It’s our secret_ , she thinks, and that rings true – but it’s not a secret anymore. And it could never have been – she never knew. She never even suspected.

It’s the opposite of closure. 

And so, as she skips backward along the timeline, the threads of her mind begin to unravel, and now she’s just confused. A warehouse full of bullet holes, one boy dead of a heart attack and another by gunshot. A gun covered in the fingerprints of the first. It doesn’t make _sense_. Two papers away from the bottom of the pile, she finds it. A police report. She doesn’t recognise it for what it is, at first, but as she leafs through the few pages contained within the file, she realises what she’s holding. The conclusion of the Kira case. The officer who brought her the papers has hidden this for her as well. Will his lose his job if it was discovered, or was it planned? Is this supposed to bring the Second Kira out of hiding? She wants to laugh, but she can’t. Was it kindness or cruelty that led him to give her this?

She reads it.

Here’s the thing about the events at Daikouku Wharf, as she understands them:

They don’t make sense.

She can see it in her mind. Light finds evidence proving that this student – his classmate Hideki Ryuga (according to the papers), or perhaps a man named Ryuzaki (according to the police report) – is Kira. He takes a pistol to confront him – probably his father’s pistol, being police-issue. He confronts him. Kira uses his power to kill Light, but before Light dies, he kills Kira. And Misa doesn't want to believe that, because Light wouldn’t have killed Kira, her saviour. She can’t seem to make the threads come together in her mind, and every time she comes to the conclusion that Light is not Kira, something in her whispers _you’re wrong_ . It could be because she still wants to believe that Light is her knight in shining armour. It could be because she knew Light better than anyone else, she’s sure, and she would have _known_ . Or perhaps it’s just that a part of her knows she’s wrong. But even so, it doesn’t make sense that everyone would see that and think of _Light_ as the culprit. He’s the one who died of a heart attack!

But when she reads the police report, it clicks into place.

_Irregularities in bloodstain pattern analysis indicate that Ryuzaki was the first to die… Ryuzaki’s suspicions may have led him to take action… Possibility of Ryuzaki as Kira had previously been raised… MPD also suggested as an explanation by criminal psychology experts… both victims had alibis for some if not all of the murders however following the incident, Kira’s murders stopped within 24 hours and have not restarted… murder weapon still undiscovered… Possibility that Yagami believed Ryuzaki to be Kira remains indecisive… Trick drawer rigged to self-combust discovered in Yagami’s room by his mother after his death, evidence could not be recovered from it but it appeared to be empty… Request from Wammy’s House that Ryuzaki’s true identity not be made public… explanation for Kira’s disappearance required… Chief Yagami resigns in the aftermath of the incident… consents for Light Yagami’s name to be publicised as the true identity of Kira despite personal misgivings… neither innocence nor guilt can be proven for either at this time… case will be publicised as a murder-suicide with Light Yagami as the perpetrator…_

So even the police don’t know. Well, it makes sense. And what extra information they _have_ got… it’s hard for her to believe Light would kill himself. But maybe L got a hold of Kira’s weapon somehow in his final moments? The knowledge settles in her, even though this file should only confuse her more. Light is – was – Kira. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t tell her. This is how he tells her, this is part of his master plan; even through death, he wanted her to know. She can’t carry on his work, but – she can at least carry the knowledge, in the spot in her stomach that up until a few minutes ago had been hollow with uncertainty and incomprehension.

The report doesn’t contain any information about her confinement and release, which makes sense if she’s still under suspicion – even someone trying to help her find closure wouldn’t give her information that could allow her to resume the murders – the _executions_ , Misa reminds herself. Somehow the word doesn’t have the same righteous certainty it held for her once, and that’s a strange feeling, but she accepts it, because only a few months ago she hadn’t been able to feel at all. Ever since Kira avenged her parents, ever since she met Light, she’s been able to _feel_ again. That hasn’t gone away, even now; she doesn’t feel the same emptiness she felt the last time she experienced grief. To even call them both “grief” seems to do a disservice to both what she is feeling now and what she felt when she became an orphan; they are barely echoes of each other, similar in reason and raw power, but not in texture or taste. She wonders how that could happen, if it means she loved her parents differently or simply _less_. 

*

The apartment’s doorbell rings again early the next morning: That same officer, Matsuda, again; this time bearing boxes of groceries from her list. He helps her to unpack them, saying she looks tired, and Misa is about to react with indignation and outrage – _of course_ she does! And even so, it’s unspeakably rude to say that to her face! – when he asks if it’s because she stayed up late catching up on the news. His face, stretching carefully over unspoken words, tells her that he’s asking a different question. It takes a moment for Misa to connect that to the smuggled police report, and she responds with as much meaning as she can that yes, that’s why she’s tired, and she’s all caught up now. His eyes dart over to the pile of newspapers, and he asks if she wants him to take her rubbish bins down to the big communal ones, and she says yes, that would be wonderful, how kind of him to offer, just give her a moment to gather the newspapers she doesn’t need anymore. She slides the police report between the pages of one of the issues of _Sakura Daily_ and drops it in the bin before she brings it to the door. He smiles at her, and she tries to convey exactly how much this meant with her eyes as she beams in response. 

*

She still has Sayu’s number programmed into one of her phones – they had exchanged them the second time Misa visited Light’s house. It had been sweet, really; she has social media, of course, and she interacts with fans regularly, but Sayu liked to send a little reaction selfie whenever she listened to one of Misa’s songs. They could spend half an hour at a time making fun of Light together. He hadn’t approved of their friendship, Misa doesn’t think, but she can’t recall why – probably because he was afraid of Sayu embarrassing him in front of his girlfriend, she supposes. The last text is from the day before Misa had been arrested; a photo of Light, hair wet from the shower, toothbrush in hand and foamy spit spilling out of his mouth as he tried to wrestle the camera away from Sayu. The caption of the picture read _THIS is what you’re dating lol just thought i should let you know what youre in for :p_ . Misa had replied with a row of hearts and _i can’t think what you mean, he looks as gorgeous and sophisticated as always!!_

She dials the number now – can’t put it off any longer, now that she’s broken radio silence with her agent and her manager and everyone else who had been clamouring to get in touch with her, waved off her absence as best she could, posted a selfie online with a paragraph about a family emergency, and turned off her notifications before she could get bombarded with a deluge of sympathetic concern from her fans that would only serve to make her feel that much worse. It rings a few times before Sayu picks up.

It’s not a happy conversation, by any stretched definition. It is a conversation which attempts the impossible – to talk about Light Yagami without also talking about Kira – and succeeds. Sayu tells her about the funeral, about the eulogy her mother had given, about the weather on that day and the weather on the day after, about all the celebrity gossip she’s missed. Misa doesn’t have much to add, having been out of the loop for a while, but she fills Sayu in on her insider information about Ryuga Hideki’s exes, and about a character she was tapped to play in a movie – it had happened a week and a half ago, while she was off-radar, but her manager had offered vague confirmation in her absence and the audition isn’t for a month, so it hasn’t fallen through. Sayu tells her where the family grave is, and Misa asks her what Light’s favourite type of flower had been.

Five days later, she gets a text from Sayu: a fifteen-second video of her dancing to a song from Misa’s debut album. She smiles down at her phone and replies with a happy face and a heart.

*

That unfamiliar urn is big and heavy and unwieldy – almost twice as large as her parents’ had been – but when the house arrest ends, four months after it began, Misa finds that she can barely stand to leave the house without it, even just on a trip to the supermarket. She does, of course, because what’s she going to do, cart it around in a backpack for the rest of her life? It’s clearly just some kind of weird compulsion, some freakish way her grief at being left alone _again_ has latched onto whatever it can find. But being without it, being without the certainty of knowing it’s just over on the desk, or in the next room, or across the hall… that feeling is unspeakably strange to her, stranger even than the foreign inscription scrawled on the side of the vase, the colour of bone. 

She forces herself to leave it at home every time, and wanders the supermarket aisles like a child who’s lost her parents, turning at shadows and glancing twice at tall, thin, pale strangers as something sparks in the back of her memory, as if running up to a woman with hair the same colour as her mother’s, then drawing back in muted shock and shame. It pulls her back, back, back, to the first few months as the only member of her family, when she would see strangers from behind on the street and dare to hope, just for a minute, that _somehow…_

So it’s no surprise that when she takes the forty-minute trip to visit the city cemetery, she _does_ bring the urn, carefully upright and wrapped in paper and bubble wrap that takes up almost all the space in her small backpack, leaving her to carry the flowers she’s bringing in her arms so as not to crush them. It’s just – so far, she tells herself, although she can’t even pretend to justify why the distance matters, why she can’t just leave the urn at home. _A dead stranger won’t make you any less alone_ , a part of her brain says, but the rest of her says _yes, it will._

She doesn’t question the certainty that it’s a person’s ashes, and not some weird prank, a mysterious jar full of sand or regular ash or something similar but unrecognisable. There are a lot of things Misa has stopped questioning, strange certainties and fears. She had never thought of herself as superstitious, but perhaps things change. Of all reasons to start believing in the unfounded, cheating death three times is probably pretty high on the list.

*

It’s the same cemetery she’s been visiting for years, where her family’s ashes are housed. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that muscle memory takes over, and she finds herself kneeling in front of her own family’s tomb before she even remembers why she’s here. She’d planned to come here anyway after visiting Light, so she has enough incense with her to burn some here as well, and a wreath for her parents as well as Light’s bouquet.

It had been mid-morning when she arrived; the noonday sun on her back forces her to retreat after a few hours. She returns to one of the main walkways to find a pamphlet with a map, and makes her way to the plot Sayu had directed her to. Her hands tremble as she adds her bouquet to the pile of flowers and offerings already there. It’s a mess, and the florist had asked Misa multiple times if she was sure when she handed him the list of what to include in the arrangement. For once she can’t bring herself to care about the clashing colours, the cramped composition; this is a message, from her to Light.

Marigolds, for faithfulness. Gladiolus, for honour and remembrance. Hyssopus, for cleansing sacrifice. Dappled red and black roses, for love and death. Jasione, for righteousness and remorse. Blue bellflowers, for gratitude. Forget-me-nots, for undying love. Red spider lilies, which Sayu had said were his favourite: for death and hurricanes.

She doesn’t know how else to tell him. She never left arrangements like this on her parents’ graves, not even the first time she visited – she never paid attention to the symbolism of lilies or roses or chrysanthemums before; it was romantic to think about, but it had seemed hackneyed and cliché and like a perfectly good way to spoil a lovely arrangement with incongruous colours and shapes. She left flowers and incense for her family, but the act of doing so was enough to convey (to her or to them, she doesn’t know) how much she loved them, missed them, thought of them. Now, though, this is the only thing she can think of that will serve her purpose. Something conspicuously different, something incongruous and so aesthetically wrong that when Light sees it, wherever he is, he will know that it is not art – it is a letter.

She doesn’t know how else to tell him.

*

She had taken the bus to the cemetery. Now, in the fading light of the afternoon, she walks. It will take at least an hour and a half, maybe two. It’s better this way.

Her backpack is still heavy, although her arms are empty now. The weight is comforting, though. Misa wants to take out the urn and hold it in her arms, not to relieve her back, but to hold it as close to her as she can, like a teddy. She can’t risk dropping it on the pavement, though, so it stays in her bag until she reaches the pedestrian bridge near her apartment building. A peculiar feeling washes over her as she looks out over the small river, and she wants to laugh – she wants to cry. She had almost died here, less than a year ago. She _should_ have died here.

She can’t even begin to understand why she feels so _safe_.

She would have died here, if not for – Kira? But that answer is wrong, she knows it, even though she knows with absolute certainty it was a heart attack. She would have died here – had she not been loved.

She wants to cry, so she does.

She sinks to the ground, takes off her backpack and pulls out the urn. Hugs it to her chest. Traces the bone-white inscription with fingers wet with tears. And then she takes off the lid and holds the jar in one arm. Takes a handful of sand-ash-stranger-friend-ghost and scatters it off the side of the bridge. She walks the last few minutes home like that, leaving a breadcrumb trail, and still has half the jar left when she unlocks her front door. She’ll keep it, she thinks, but she can leave it at home from now on. The world isn’t safe, she knows that – she knows that so well, better than she ever cared to. But somehow, she feels safe in it.


End file.
